Thursday, 20 September 2012

Collection 2000 Hot Looks: review and nail art

Hey everyone! I've still not taken the easy way out and gone home yet, battling through it (though I wish I didn't have to) so again I'm bringing you a post that I did before I came here. The lovely Hannah from Collection PR was so quick in sending me these and I intended to be quick in posting them. I swatched them straight away but the stress of moving got in the way and I've only just got around to editing them. I hope you enjoy my first official review even if it took longer than intended! All pictures were taken in natural inside light. I'll show you swatches first and then at the end I'll show you the nail art I created with these 4 polishes, but I'm warning you now of the extreme overload in pictures you're about to receive!

First up we have 'Shimmy Shake' which is a gold 'shimmery' glitter. When I saw this you can guess what my reaction was because of my impatience with removing glitter, but it was actually incredibly easy to remove and for that in particular I think I will be returning to this product. The picture above is 3 coats with no top coat.

I decided about halfway through that this was definitely a polish to be used with layering, so I decided to put it over black. The ring finger has 2 coats and the rest all have 1 and I definitely prefer it like this:

Next up is 'Fruit Loop', a lovely peach colour. I own a lot of peach polishes and had expectations for this to be opaque within 2 coats but I found myself needing a third. That may just be the perfectionist in me or bad application on my part but the pictures below are 3 coats. It definitely does what it says on the bottle though, this polish dries incredibly fast!

Next up is 'Angel Wings', I'm so glad Hannah sent me this colour because it's the kind of grey I've needed for so long and never had. It's a beautiful light grey and, like Fruit Loop, dries really fast. I used 2 coats in the pictures below:

Finally we have 'Button Moon' which is definitely my go-to blue now. I'm sure you all know of my obsession with blue polishes, especially baby blue so you can imagine my reaction when I saw this. Although, whilst it dries fast like Angel Wings and Fruit Loop, I had some slight issues with application on my pinky finger. I think I may have applied abnormally thin coats, which suggests that you may need slightly thicker coats for opaque application. Nonetheless the rest look great and I was definitely impressed with this product due to it's drying time and it's opacity compared to other baby blues I own.

In relation to application I would say all four are good in relation to drying time, although Shimmy Shake seemed to dry on average the same as most polishes, and opacity. Colours-wise there are also a great range of colours in their collection which I would definitely recommend, but out of these four Button Moon would of course have to be my favourite.

Next up is some nail art using the 4 polishes above!

First of all is a gradient (still practising!) using Button Moon and Fruit Loop. I originally tried this the other way around but despite Button Moon's consistency in application it was way too thin to be used for gradients. Although I do like how they turned out this way!

Glitter alone will never be something I'm a fan of so of course I had to add something to them. I do wish I'd added black outlines to the hearts to make them 'pop' a bit more but for a quick design I quite like it. Button Moon and Fruit Loop were also both very opaque for nail art and dried very fast (perhaps too fast in Fruit Loop's case, I had to keep using new polish more often than usual)

And finally; the least obvious of the 3 designs, saran wrap nails using Fruit Loop and Angel Wings. Unfortunately I couldn't get a good picture of these but they were a lot more obvious in person I promise! This was my first time trying saran wrap nails and I was surprised at how easy is is. Both polishes were good with consistency and despite Fruit Loop's earlier issues it was very opaque atop of Angel Wings.

I hope you enjoyed my first review! I would definitely recommend Angel Wings and Button Moon, but that's just because of the colours I like, Fruit Loop and Shimmy Shake are both also impressive for the price range.

Collection 2000 Hot Looks retail for around £1.99 in Boots and Superdrug

I wish I had this much patience with my nails! But I remember my first few days at uni, and I was all ready to give up and go home, and when lectures started we all went out on a course night out with all the other years and I spent as much time with my flat mates as possible and within a week or so I didn't wana leave. I also covered my room in photos and stuff =]3 years later I'm a graduate and completely gutted I'm not at Fresher's week this year!

I absolutely love to read all your comments, they make my day! So please do not hesitate to tell me what you think, but I ask that you don't link spam to your blog in your comment, thankyou so much everyone!